Chris Martin

Chris Martin started doing stand-up comedy in March, 2009, performing in open mics at Sticky Rice, Cafe Diem, Fallout, Aztek Grill, Strange Matter, City Dogs and the 9:55 Comedy Club in Richmond, VA and the Charlottesville Comedy Roundtable in Charlottesville, VA and Cozzy's Comedy Club in Newport News, VA. His specialty is topical humor.

He was in the new talent showcase at RITA's Comedy Club in Richmond, Virginia. opening for Erik Myers. He's also been the MC for Blake Midgette's Super Friends Camp Comedy show at the New York Deli and Joe Hafkey's Cafe Diem Comedy Night in Richmond. He received a standing ovation at the Official Blake Midgette Roast at Cafe Diem.

He was the stand-up comedian at the Paradox Comedy improv group's Halloween show, "Motel Hell." He's also been in Santa de Haven's comedy showcases at Artspace in Plant Zero. He was a contestant in the Jim Beam "Last Stag Standing" comedy competition presented by Kenny Wingle at Cafe Europa in Richmond last year.

He frequently contributes jokes to DailyComedy.com and his jokes are regularly featured as staff picks. He's a frequenst competitor in the MakeaStar.com stand-up comedy competition. "Smokin' Hot: Conversations with Comedians" is an ongoing series of interviews with comics. He started Salty Tongue Records on Last.fm to showcase comedians. He also established RVAstand-up.com, which allows stand-up comedians to post notices of upcoming shows and audio, photos and videos of their sets. He's also done videography and appeared in Omari Brown and John Reaves' sketch comedy group, "The Undergrads" on FunnyorDie.com.

He has a website at ChrisMartinComedy.com and his Twitter handle is @ChrisBMartin. He has over 1,500 subscribers to his stand-up comedy podcasts on iTunes.

He is less well-known than British comedian Chris Martin but English comic Carl Donnelly told the London googleganger, "I reckon this one is going to be funnier than you."

No one likes a joke better than Cancer, and his funny side is all the more startling when it pops up so incongruously from his normally quiet, gentle personality. Lunar humor runs deep.
- Wanda Lee Porter

CarlDonnelly: @ChrisMcomedy I reckon this one is going to be funnier than you: https://chrismartincomedy.wordpress.com/

What people are saying about Chris Martin:
@eMOMster: @chrisbmartin so tacky
Sicko. - Lolabee

All you cyber-bullies are just pathetic, saying all that stuff about Miley. What has she ever done to you? And making that joke about she should be dead, it is horrible. - Emily

Here’s a stand-up comedy routine by Fred Klett on the subject of Halloween. Klett talks about the real meaning behind Halloween — how much candy you can get in one night as you run door to door until people stop answering the door. Vodpod videos no longer available.

I did my first stand-up comedy ten-minute set ever at Paradox Comedy’s “Motel Hell” Halloween show yesterday (October 29) evening at Art 6 in midtown Richmond, VA, following in the illustrious footsteps of RVA comedians such as Jared Cullum, Ray Bullock, Blake Midgette, Jeff Curran and Melanie Rasnic. I guess we’ll know we’re making progress when some of us start showing up in Wikipedia and Zemanta starts suggesting links when I use these names. If I left anyone out of Paradox’s stand-up roster, I apologize profusely. (Not that anyone cares.)

People responded well and got props from some members of the audience afterwards. Thanks for Jesse Wiley and Thomas George for affording me the opportunity. Thanks to Jesse for being the friendly face in the front row. (Actually, there is a Thomas George in Wikipedia but he’s a politician in Australia.) I did a couple of jokes about Artie Lange again but that may be too infra dig for RVA. I wonder if people in Richmond know who he has. Of course, Howard Stern had a run in Richmond syndicated to a local radio station but I suspect that was way before Artie’s time. Lange really looks like hell in the above photo — he makes John Belushi look like a health nut. Mandie Hillary hadn’t heard of balloon boy so my joke went over her head. She must be one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t heard of him by now, and that might be a good thing.

Paradox Comedy didn’t have comedy club lighting so I could see people in the audience a lot better than usual, not to mention good lighting for videotaping moi. I’m now four videos of my sets behind. Procrastination more than anything else. I did a couple of interviews with Jesse and Thomas after the show, audio and video.

I have been uploading videos I shot of the previous “Motel Hell” to a new YouTube channel I started at http://www.youtube.com/LaughHut. I’m going to use Laugh Hut as a place for videos of non-me comedy. I’ve been trying to separate out videos by channels to avoid confusion: one channel for interviews (SmokinHotComedy), one channel for my stand-up (ChrisMartinComedian) and one for general stuff (Mediastupor). I’ve been trying to upload more stuff by setting up the YouTube multi-loader to upload stuff while I’m sleeping. That’s generally good for two or three videos a night based on the fact that it takes roughly an hour per 100 megabytes with my low-end DSL connection.

Unfortunately, I exited the show only to find that the lock on my bike had malfunctioned so that I had to catch a ride from one of the crew, which screwed up my plans to swing by Kroger and also mail my latest Netflix movie.

I managed to blow past 200 followers on Twitter but the numbers are dropping back as I don’t follow people back who are into MLM or who appear to have randomly followed me based on no particular mutual interest (an Indian art advisor, The Elbow Friend, a gadget that you attach to your chair (may have been looking for the other Chris Martin since they posted a “Viva la Vida” YouTube video, a NYC art dealer, etc. in hopes that I will follow them back. This makes about as much sense as making friends with people you randomly call from the phone book but whatever floats their boat. I make it clear on my Twitter page that I’m all about the comedy so there’s no false advertising on my part. They too shall pass.

Only nine more days until Halloween, or as some people refer to it, National Night Out for predators. Are you excited about Halloween? I’m more excited than David Letterman hiring a new personal assistant. Dick Cheney is excited about Halloween too. He’s going to dress up as the Ghost of Torture Past. Everyone who comes to the Cheney house Halloween night gets a free shotgun blast in the face. Cheney may be getting confused in his old age. He recently said America was safer because the Obamas got a Portuguese Water Boarding dog. Right after Halloween is Election Day, or as I like to call it, National Night out of the Closet for former Idaho senator Larry Craig.

A lot of people don’t know that Edgar Allan Poe, in addition to being America’s first horror writer of note, was also America’s first stand-up comedian. The only problem was that every joke ended with the same punchline: “Here, here, it is the beating of his hideous heart!” Come to think it, Poe may have been talking about Dick Cheney. Kind of a downer. Probably why he didn’t get too many laughs. The reason I don’t get too many laughs: too much conceptual comedy.

October 8 was National Depression Screening Day. I wanted to participate but I was too depressed. In Mel Gibson’s latest movie role, he plays a depressed man who believes his beaver puppet talks to him. Crazy stuff. In his next film, he’ll play a guy who believes the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Jon Gosselin is thinking about converting to Judaism. Haven’t the Jews suffered enough? First the Holocaust and now this. As if there weren’t enough people already hating on the Jews.

Bob Dylan is putting out an album of Christmas songs. Is Bob Dylan Christian or Jewish these days? It’s hard to keep track. Is there an app for that? There should be a web site for that in the grand tradition of “Is Twitter Down?” Another web site I want to see: “Is Cat Stevens still a Muslim?”

An ad on Facebook that said, “Find out who’s been searching for you.” Underneath the headline was a photo of a large-breasted young woman. What an amazing coincidence. I’ve been looking for large-breasted young women on the Internet and all along they’ve been looking for me. Curiously, all the Christian singles in Facebook ads also have large breasts. Apparently, not only can Jesus turn water into wine, he can turn a B-cup into a D-cup. If Jesus comes back, I want to know so I can follow him – on Twitter.

Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha walked into a bar. The bartender said, “What will you have?” Jesus said, “I’ll have a Rusty Nail and a Bloody Mary.” Mohammed said, “I’ll have a Virgin drink.” Buddha said, “Who do I have to kill to get out of this joke?” Believe it or not, I came up with the idea for a show called “Copts.” It turns out there wasn’t a big market for a series about Egyptian Christians so Fox took it in another direction.

Hey, let’s try to get into Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” for free. That’s almost as original as filming yourself trying to get past a security guard at a corporation headquarters, the equivalent of doing jokes about airline food in stand-up comedy. It was mildly amusing in “Roger & Me,” but if you’re still doing the same bit 20 years later, you might as well admit you’re a hack. It’s hard to say which is more ironic, getting lectured on health care by a guy who looks like he belongs on the poster of “Supersize Me” or getting lectured on capitalism by a guy who owns a New York City penthouse.

Levi Johnston is appearing nude in Playgirl. Now Sarah Palin won’t have to travel all the way to Hong Kong to see someone’s junk. A White House adviser urged bloggers to “take off their pajamas” and get serious about politics. I resent that. Some of us are wearing Snuggies™. One day I’ll stop mourning the death of Teddy Kennedy. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Starbucks has two new free apps for the iPhone. My advice is to stay away from the Steve Jobs liver-flavored Frappaccino now in beta. Kim Jong Il is also rumoured to have suffered from pancreatic cancer, diabetes and more than one stroke. If he gets any sicker, he’ll have to change his name to Kim Jong Dead.

We’ve turned away from the values that made this country great. What is this country coming to? MacDonald’s has lattes. 7-11 sells food that actually has less plastic in it than the containers it comes in. I’m concerned about a disturbing trend in microwave dinners where you have to remove the dinner halfway through and stir the entree. Isn’t this making us work for our food a lot more than we really want to? And how about the deterioration in the Barely Legal videos? Nothing says youthful innocence like a set of 38-inch implants, a pierced vagina and 40 hours of tattoo work.

It turns out the Balloon Boy story was a hoax. The Balloon Boy story blew up bigger than Meghan McCain’s breasts on Twitter.

I’m thinking about writing a book because if Lisa Lampanelli can write a book, anyone can write a book. Here’s a comedian whose entire act consists a fat white woman talking about how she likes black guys. Original stuff. If Lisa Lampanelli can write a book, then Artie Lange can open a driving school. A NASA rocket crashed into the moon. So when did Artie become an astronaut?

If I had a rocket launcher, I’d join the National Rifle Association. If clothes make the man, then I’m a cheap bastard. My dentist has two practices, one in Richmond and one in Fredericksburg. His name on Twitter is FredDentist. For some reason, he doesn’t want to be known as RichDentist.

That’s my time. Remember, when guns are outlawed, only Dick Cheney and the police will have guns. Think about that for a while. Have a great evening.

Still bouncing around the Internet, trying to find a good platform for a stand-up comedy web site. My first effort was a hosted site at GoDaddy using Serif’s WebPlus but I ran into WSYWIG problems with audio and video. On to Weebly but I ran into limitations with sizing photos correctly. The blog wasn’t industrial strength. The blog doesn’t have a blogroll built into it unless you count Delicious but you can’t break it down into categories.

I liked the ability to bypass GoDaddy’s ads by rerouting the DNS to Weebly. You can do that for free on Weebly but it costs extra at WordPress. You can’t upload audio to WordPress without paying extra as with Weebly. WordPress has a nice feature integrated in that you can tweet your blog posts. Weebly allows you to use Google AdSense but the day I make any money using Google AdSense is the day I’m on David Letterman (insert your own joke here, heh, heh).

Three Richmond stand-up comedians who are using WordPress to host their web sites: Blake Midgette, Jared Cullum and Tim Wood. Molly Buckley of the improv group Made of Bees uses WordPress and she’s a social media goddess. Three comedian tweeps that have rockin’ web sites: Mandy Stadtmiller, Paul Mercurio and Joe Klocek but they probably have the money to pay someone to do it for them.

On my list of things to do: install some widgets and customize the header.

In other news, it looks like I’ll be hitting 200 followers on Twitter. To paraphrase the old blues song, if it weren’t for affiliate marketeers, SEO gurus and MLMers, I wouldn’t have any followers at all.

Let’s have a moment of silence for GeoCities, where I got my start building web sites.